For a pervasive life long
learning movement in
India, we will have to
strengthen the learning
foundations, provide a
broad range of learning
opportunities and
recognize and reward
learning regardless of
why, where and how it
takes place. Policy
initiatives should focus
on strengthening the
knowledge society.
Learning & education
Educational systems and learning
societies, recognizing the cognizance
of the acquisition of knowledge,
collation, organization and
interpretation — has undergone a
tremendous change in recent past,
with the global access to information.
Learning styles have necessitated
changes in the existing pedagogic
approaches. The role of the teacher
has become more of a co-learner and a
strong facilitator of learning.
Successful national and
international experiences have shown
how new and innovative uses of IT
for e-Governance, e-Learning through
digital technology tools, health care
delivery and to provide livelihoods
opportunities.
e-Education and e-Commerce are
making a difference to the lives of
people. Rural and urban connectivity
with a reliable, available (24X7),
affordable, maintainable, robust ICT
infrastructure, can benefit the farmers
by giving them better and quicker information on market conditions
thereby eliminating the
middlemen and by securing better
prices for their produce. Speedy and
accurate issuing of land records
through IT is another example that
has captured the imagination of rural
population. Therefore, the methods
for taking the digital revolution
benefits to the rural population have
to be explored far more urgently, and
vigorously. A unique model called
“Re-urbanization” which advocates
clustering of villages for establishing
schools, health centers and
service facilities and connecting them
can become important force.
A knowledge society aims to achieve
societal transformation and ethical
wealth generation. As a third
dimension emerges as a country
transforms itself into a knowledge
superpower, knowledge protection
becomes a critical factor. India is well
placed at the dawn of knowledge era.
For India to become a knowledge
society, it has to be a learning society
first. For life long learning, it is not only the settings of formal education
that are important, but also the
settings of home, the work place, the
community and the society at large
are important. For a pervasive life
long learning movement in India, we
will have to strengthen the learning
foundations, provide a broad range of
learning opportunities and recognize
and reward learning regardless of
why, where and how it takes place.
Policy initiatives on life long learning,
should focus on
- motivation for the individuals to
learn on a continuing basis
- equipping them with necessary
cognitive and other skills for self
direct learning
- providing economic as well as
easy access to opportunities for
learning on a continuous basis
- creating incentives to individuals
to make it worth while to
participate whole heartedly in the
process of life long learning
In a knowledge society, people are the
creators of knowledge capital. And,
generation of trained and skilled human resources is a key challenge.
The market estimates a requirement
of more than three million knowledge
workers in multiple technologies.
It is also essential to encourage
domestic private sector and people of
Indian origin living in other countries
to invest in a massive way in
education in India, particularly in
technical and higher professional
education.
 Learning societies and some
universal directions
New concepts such as “On Demand
Education”, “Education for All” etc.,
necessitates partnerships and
alliances among tripartite
stakeholders, viz., private sector, the
government and the communities or
institutions ICTs can play a key role
in overcoming the challenges. Special
emphasis has been given for
standardizing Information Technology
related curricula and also reforming
the educational course contents in the
Information Technology related
subjects to make the graduates
passing out of the institutions to be
immediately employable and this
requires industry-academia
collaboration and co-working. ICTs
are also very useful for re-training of the existing work force to make them
more productive and use the
technology and creativity.
Online communities and
societal empowerment
The developing economies have to
operate by sharing resources and the
concept of on-line communities has to
be accepted as the better way of
implementing the knowledge
dissemination as well as economy of
transition. The networking
technologies are the ideal tool for
introducing the concept of online
communities to share, exchange, store
products and tools and penetrate the
global niche market. The
entertainment and media industry has
to play a greater role in empowering
the society. This requires selfregulated
supportive media policies
to be introduced for the developing
nations.
Cutting across tradition of national
communities is the rise of “online
communities”, drawn together by
issues of politics, ethnicity, interests,
gender, work or social cause. Online
communities exchange debates and
have instant responses bringing new
lobbying power to previously silent
voices on the global stage. At the
same time, network communications
can forge closer local communities,
providing community information and
making local Government more
transparent. In the developing
countries, they have to use the
concept of “online communities” for
facilitating, catalyzing, organizing,
gathering, structuring, analyzing and
making information transparent and
available to decision makers for better
visualization and conceptualization of
socio-economic development
programs.
The global entertainment and media
industry - spreading opinion, culture
and politics are dominated by handful
of major companies. The declining
cost of this technology has allowed
diversity of voice and culture to be
aired. Multi-lingual Internet sites and
radio program in local languages
reach out to minority groups.
Programs and satellite TV brings
news and culture for the people who
are away from home, settled across
the globe.
ICTs can impact human development
by providing information, enabling
empowerment and rising productivity.
Telemedicine and Health Net
information services can bring critical
knowledge to information poor
hospitals and health workers. The
potential is great, however
technology alone will not provide the
solution. A number of barriers have to
be overcome pertaining to access,
lack of skills, lack of management
experience, and information. The
supplies of materials that need to
address the critical health or
education problems like medicines,
vaccines, clean water etc. have
to be also ensured to create a
positive impact of ICT introduction
in these arena.
 For creating enabling
empowerment, we may have to
provide
- Internet/communication
technologies
- Power to NGOs
to raise voice
and support in
global arena
- Socially
excluded
including
women’s groups
and minorities
groups be
enabled to
create cyber
communities to
find strength in
online unity and
fight the silence
or abuses of
their rights (DATPERS in India
and Chinese minorities use Web
for getting attention of world)
- Empowerment of governments of
poor nations SIDSNET -a 42-
member nation’s forum shares
data and experience on common
concerns, energy options,
sustainable tourism, coastal and
marine resources and
biodiversities
For enabling the reverse
knowledge flow
Rural masses possess variety of
traditional technologies. The
harnessing of information,
communication and networking
technologies will enable reverse
knowledge flow. This will enable
two-way exchange of knowledge
between urban and rural and
developed and under-developed
economies. For India to become
a software super power, it has
to develop professionals of
international calibre for software
development, content creation
and services management. The new
IT policy enabled India to generate
the necessary technical manpower
for the development of software using
the multi-sector resources.
The policies that have focussed on
providing quality education in the IT
sector have worked well in terms of
producing large amount of manpower
to fulfill the requirements of the software industry.
India has used the
e-talented
manpower
availability as the
economic
advantage for
positioning itself as
software super
power in the global
scenario. All the
multinational
companies have
opted to open the
software
development
centers, design
centers and service centers in India to
take cost advantage of skilled human
manpower for their economic
advantage, and many multinational
corporations have already or are
trying to have India Strategies. This
has improved India’s economic
position in terms of monetary in-flow
and export of goods and services.
This is evident from “India
Everywhere” in Davos in January
2006. Similarly, Korea and China took
advantage of
e-manufacturing advantage and
Singapore e-trade facilitation
advantage.
Universal networking language
and cyber kiosks
For the Internet penetration, language
plays a very important role especially
a multi-lingual country like India
needs to promote multiple languages
contents delivery through Internet to
promote wide spread penetration. Lot
of initiatives has been taken for multilingual
Internet content design and
public education and trends in Asian
language development. Lot of
creative research is done in this part
of the region on automatic translation
of contents from one language to
other language and also translation of
scripts for use in media and public.
The development of Unicode
standards and acceptance of these
standards, and pushing the language
encoders and decoders to the ISP’s
will enable to meet the content required are to be translated in multilanguages
for mass computerization
and consumption. Cyber kiosks
establishment is one way of
knowledge dissemination, for the
masses. The Citizen’s Service Centres
or CSCs is the best approach for
electronic service delivery. This
requires ease of access, front-end
web enabling and back-end
integration of systems and
applications. These information
networks and kiosks will have an
impact to create an effective
knowledge society if it can address
following seven key factors:
- Connectivity and networking
- Community access
- Capacity building
- Local content
- Promoting Creativity - adapting
technology to local needs and
constraints
- Collaboration
- Cash - finding innovative ways to
fund the knowledge society.
The Information Society Index,
prepared by the World Times and the
International Data Corporation, gives
one way of measuring a country’s
preparedness, across four types of
infrastructure: viz., Information,
Computer, Internet and Social.
a) Information: Creating the
capacity to send and receive
information by telephone,
television, radio and fax.
b) Computer: Extending access to
computers in schools, workplaces
and homes, building networks
and using software.
c) Internet: Expand the Internet in
schools, workplaces and homes
and enabling Electronic
Commerce.
d) Social: Building people’s
capacity to use information
through education, freedom of
the press and civil liberty.
When we are exploring
and envisioning a vibrant
knowledge society for development,
ICTs in education can play a
critical role. 
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